


Stripped Down To the Bone: A Drabble Collection

by objectlesson



Series: Drabble Collections [5]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:55:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23884120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: A collection of short fics written for a series of writing prompts! Check chapter notes for full warnings and tags on each chapter
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Series: Drabble Collections [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1727191
Comments: 21
Kudos: 99





	1. you've got your leather boots on

**Author's Note:**

> So Blake and I decided to brush the dust of of this Depeche Mode lyric inspired 30 days writing challenge we both failed to complete in November and redo it with Bagginshield (because lets face it....these lyrics....are all very fitting for them...). A few of mine have turned into longer pieces but the ones that are 1k and under I'm just dumping here. Some are sexy some are pining but if you want the full run down I'll be leaving tags in each chapter notes for the subsequent fic!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post BOTFA, fix it fic, Shire!fic, domestic, husbands. Rating: everyone.

Bilbo blinks his way from the mess of sleep, and furrows his brow as his bedroom comes into slow, hazy focus. 

It’s still _dark_ out, but Thorin is awake already. Awake and fully dressed in travel attire, bent over his own knee to deftly tie the laces to the heavy, steel-toed boots he wore for the duration of their journey together some years ago. It’s in this moment that Bilbo realizes he hasn’t _seen_ Thorin wear shoes of _any_ sort in months.

_I’ll make a hobbit of you yet, Thorin Oakenshield,_ he once said as he forced elevenses on Thorin even as he rudely and repeatedly insisted he was still full from second breakfast. And he hadn’t really meant it when he said it because Bilbo actually _loved_ loving a dwarf, perhaps _because_ he was a dwarf, and he was endeared to his decidedly Dwarvish ways…but. Maybe there was some truth to it, some quiet internalization, because for the last few months of summer since Thorin properly made himself at home in Bag End, he hasn’t donned his boots. Not once. 

“What on earth are you doing up and dressed before the _sun_ even rises?” he mumbles from his pillow, before he decides he would rather have Thorin’s pillow instead, because it smells like him. Bilbo clumsily switches them, and buries his face into the scent of Thorin’s hair. 

Thorin’s eyes widen, as if he did not know Bilbo was awake. Then he turns to him and smiles fondly. “It’s Saturday,” he offers, as if that clears things up. Bilbo must continue to peer at him judgmentally, because he shifts closer and sighs, before he sits on the edge of the mattress so it dips under his weight, broad, warm palm spread over Bilbo’s hip through layers of blankets. “I’m off to Bree to sell goods in the marketplace. If you recall, our local merchant is bedridden with the flu. So, I offered to ride in with a cart full of his vegetables alongside my usual wares. I told you this earlier in the week, did you forget?” he squeezes Bilbo’s knee, eyes glittering in the promise of dawn light. “Ah, perhaps you’d had too much wine when I shared my plans with you.” 

Bilbo scoffs, because he most certainly _did not_ have too much wine. He only fails to recall moments when he’s expected to _let go_ of Thorin, if even for a single day and night in Bree. He must have blocked it out, instead. “No, no. I remember,” he mumbles, rolling over onto his back and sighing. “Unfortunately, I now recall the whole exchange, I just—I didn’t realize it would be so _soon._ When will you be back?” And then, because it’s still weighing on him, the image burnt into his retinas so heartrending and thrilling all at once, “You’re wearing _boots.”_

Thorin leans in to kiss Bilbo on the cheek then, murmuring against it before deciding he must kiss him on the mouth instead, grab his chin between thumb and forefinger and turn his face so that he may lick inside his mouth to taste him. It’s a decision he makes after he initiates most kisses, and Bilbo can hardly believe how very lucky he is, so inspire such reckless longing. He closes his eyes, and sucks Thorin’s tongue for a moment, forgetting the hour, forgetting Bree, forgetting the boots, forgetting it _all_ but this because it’s really so very _unfair_ anything else exists in the first place. But alas. 

“Come with me,” Thorin mumbles as he pulls away, eyes still closed, hair falling in a dark curtain around them. “There’s still time for you to get dressed. You could sleep in the carriage.” 

“Amid the cabbages?I think not,” Bilbo argues, even as he tries on the idea of a day and night away from Thorin, if only for a moment. He decides it is a far less desirable fate than forcing himself up, choking down some tea, and bundling himself in his quilt as Thorin drives a pony to Bree, so instead he sighs, and makes a face. “Will you fetch me my robe, and put the kettle on?” he says then, reaching up and making fist in Thorin’s curls before he punishingly tugs at them. No creature should be so handsome, or so persuasive. Especially when he puts so _little_ energy into his persuasion. He is just—he’s _that way._ Effortlessly commanding and desirable and irresistible. Impossible to say no to, or slip away from, or deny. “I suppose we are going to Bree, then.” 

Thorin smiles with teeth, which is a less rare pleasure to witness than it once was, but still so _very_ delightful it manages to make the cold grey of almost-morning _bearable._ Even preferable. Bilbo cants up to kiss the sharp corner of that grin, and wonders what the marketplace looks like this time of year. 


	2. lie down next to me and don't move a muscle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post BOTFA, fix it fic, massage, tenderness, farm core, domestic, bathing together. Rating: teen and up

Thorin winces once at dinner, and then again, several times as he dries each dish Bilbo hands him upon scrubbing it clean. It’s not an _overt_ expression of pain, just a flicker of discomfort coursing over his face, there briefly like a raven streaking through the sky over head, sudden and dark. A tightening of his jaw, a flattening of his lips into a pale line before he grits his teeth and softens again. Bilbo likely only notices because he notices _everything_ about Thorin Oakenshield. He’s only just gotten used to the miracle of being allowed to study him openly, stare with unabashed longing at him from across the room or across the bed or wherever they may be, instead of averting his eyes to blush and scold himself as he once did. So, he spends at much time drinking him in as he can. 

It happens again an hour or so later in the bath tub, where Thorin sits between Bilbo’s legs, the breadth of him spreading them almost achingly wide, which Bilbo rather likes. He’s idly untangling snarls from Thorin’s long hair with puckered fingers when the flinch happens, alongside a sharp inhalation. “Oh! Did I pull something?” Bilbo asks, hands stilling. 

“No,” Thorin mumbles, reaching back to cover Bilbo’s hand with his own for a moment, squeezing reassuringly. “It’s only my back.” 

“What did you do to it?!” Bilbo asks, immediately shifting his attention from Thorin’s hair to his skin, palming down the taut muscles which frame his spine to search for knots, everything slick and soapy beneath his touch. Thorin is _always_ gathered so tightly, though, it’s as if he’s _made_ from knots, the whole of him pulled taut and defensive even as if soaks in a bath, even after he’s retired and left the bulk of his former responsibility to Fili in Erebor. 

“Nothing,” Thorin shrugs. “You need not worry, It’s a chronic affliction. There’s nothing to be done about it.” 

And Thorin _says_ things like that all the time, commits willingly to that which ails him as if the only way to exist is in pain. For months Bilbo has been cajoling him into considering remedies and comforts first before just _assuming_ he must suffer, and still, allowing himself to be taken care of has not become a habit. Luckily, Bilbo has the whole of his life to wear Thorin down, like a stone beneath a steady, insistent drip of water. 

He digs his knuckle into Thorin’s lower-back under water, then kisses the shape of his shoulder blade. “Once we’ve finished, I’ll rub you down. I have an herb poultice that helps with the loosening of tight muscles. You’ll like it.” 

Thorin shakes his head. “Not necessary. You already do so much.” 

Bilbo winds a wet fistful of Thorin’s hair up in his fist and tugs, forcing Thorin to relax again, to give him more weight, to just— _stop—_ resisting care as if he is undeserving of it. He is so _very_ deserving. The most deserving in all of middle earth, as far as Bilbo’s concerned. “Everything I do for you, I do because it brings me pleasure. You are never a chore, it is—it’s an honor, Thorin, to touch you. To braid your hair. To ease your pain,” he explains. Then he pauses to tilt up to presses his mouth to the shell of Thorin’s ear so that he may whisper “To let you fuck me.” 

Thorin groans quietly, and the water shifts and licks around their bodies as he moves his hand to the outside of Bilbo’s spread thigh, and grips him. “That’s different. That—it’s pleasurable for both of us,” he says voice rumbling through both of them as Bilbo presses his chest to the curve of Thorin’s spine. 

“I assure you, getting to put my hands all over the fine, strong, glorious back of a very handsome Dwarven king is absolutely pleasurable for me, too.” 

Thorin turns to look at him, brows raised over twinkling eyes but face otherwise stoic. “Must I remind you, I’m no longer a king?” 

“All the more reason to let me wait on you, then,” Bilbo counters. “No odd power dynamics to exploit in your favor. Just one very good friend helping out another with his bad back.” 

Thorin scoffs, but he does not further press the matter. He settles back and allows Bilbo to finish with his hair, murmuring quietly in approval every time a kiss is pressed to his back, or his shoulder, or the topmost knob of his spine. 

After the water grows tepid and they drain the bath to retire to sleep, Thorin falls into bed on his stomach, instead of his back. “Do as you will,” he grits out, voice muffled by Bilbo’s pillow. “But don’t punish yourself if there’s no improvement. I cannot even recall a time when my back did not ache.” 

“Might I remind you, you _also_ never had a hobbit in your life until quite recently,” Bilbo tells him, rifling through his drawers until he finds the correct jar. “Ah, smells like pine. The sheets will be scented by morning.” 

“If that’s an inconvenience—”

“No! “ Bilbo snaps, swatting as Thorin’s hand as he blindly reaches, perhaps in apology, perhaps simply to touch, but probably to lever himself up and onto his back so that he does not have to go through with the act of being vulnerable. Bilbo climbs atop him and straddles his hips so he can’t rethink his temporary lapse in selflessness. “I love the smell of pine. And I love you.” He uncaps the jar and coats his fingers, warming the poultice with the heat of his palms before beginning to rub it in. “Where exactly does it hurt?” he asks, dragging his thumbs over Thorin’s newly oiled skin, loving the way it pinks up under the drag. “You’ll have to guide me.” 

Thorin hums. “I…I am not sure where, exactly. I never thought to discern where it was because I just ignore it, so I can push through.” 

Bilbo sighs. “Oh dear,” he murmurs, making fists and kneading in earnest. “I suppose I’ll have to pay equal attention to all of you, then. A shame.” 

Thorin smiles against the blankets, which is a good sign. “What can I do, to help you?” 

“Lie there still and don’t move is all,” Bilbo promises him, tracing from the back of his back all the way down to the dimples just above the the deepest concavity of his spine. “Please, just let me care for you.” 

Thorin sighs but he also softens, and Bilbo decides he can count this as a small triumph, of sorts. 


	3. with you on top and me underneath, forget about equality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post BOTFA, Eerebor fic, first time, brief mentions of internalized homophobia, service top Thorin. Rating: Mature

Bilbo squirms in Thorin’s lap, thighs spread wide to bracken the breadth of him, breath coming out in embarrassing gasps as they grind together, Thorin’s hands all over his back under the cool, lightweight shift of the Mithril. He is giddy and mad with want, but also rather terrified, because never in his _life_ has he done something so shocking, so brazen, so _filthy._ He cannot _believe_ he’s straddling Thorin, letting him touch him, _touching_ him in return, so wild and demanding he lacks even the semblance of grace. 

Up until this point, Bilbo’s sexual experiences have been limited to shame and shadows, wine-slick fumbling at Shire parties in his neighbor’s hay loft, and once, in a garden shed. He does not remember their names, or their faces. Only the haze of pleasure amid the mess of regret, and perhaps, buried beneath it all, a seed of relief at having found at least a _few_ men in Hobbiton who shared his secret. Who were destined for loneliness. 

He is not lonely _now_ , though. He’s breathless and hot faced, and his lips are swollen from Thorin kissing them over and over again, biting him possessively, sucking like Bilbo is overripe fruit he could draw juice from were he to try hard enough. He supposed the taboo of falling in love with a Dwarf and leaving Bag End on an adventure to blindly and perhaps foolishly pursue said Dwarf seems to have outweighed the taboo of whatever Bilbo’s preferences were _before_ he left for the mountain, and his prior concerns about what his family and acquaintances might think of him feel meaningless. Nothing matters but _this_ , as far as he’s concerned: Thorin gripping his hips, mouthing down his throat so the scrub of his beard pinks up the delicate skin there. Thorin making fists in the Mithril and tugging Bilbo closer by it, groaning at the shift of silver steel over his fever-hot skin. Possessing him. 

Bilbo is in over his head, he knows. Thorin is well over one hundred years his senior, and on top of that he’s considerably more worldly.He’s worked the market in Bree, he’s been a blacksmith in the Blue Mountains, he was a young, handsome, eligible prince in Erebor before it fell. He most likely had his pick of partners, and an entire century is a _very_ long time. Bilbo wonders if Thorin has ever been in love before, and if so, how he might compare to his past, how he fares when held to the vast multitude of Thorin’s prior experiences. 

Perhaps a younger, more proper version of himself might be deterred by this. Might stop in an effort to maintain dignity, but Bilbo is not the Hobbit he was a year ago, and he has never _once_ allowed himself to want something so powerfully and desperately as he wants Thorin Oakenshield, so. He lets himself drown in the tide, this time. He lets Thorin suck marks into his neck and rub his hard cock through the Mithril, groaning all the while. “You must forgive me,” he says at some point, hand clumsy and hesitant where it covered Bilbo, chainmail skin-warm between them. “If I move too quickly…or not quickly enough, it it because—”

Bilbo kisses him wet and deep, and then he does it again, silencing whatever he was about to say. They waver like they might collapse but he manages to right himself in time and choke out, “Oh, no, no. You haven’t—you’re not. You’re fine. _I’m_ the one who shouldapologize.” 

“For what?” Thorin murmurs, touching Bilbo again, visibly mesmerized by the sight of silver steel tented and glinting in the firelight, his breath snagging on a sharp inhale as he stares. “You have nothing to apologize for, you—you are a vision, Master Baggins.” He says it almost _apologetically_ and it makes Bilbo choke out. nervous laugh, because it’s _truly absurd,_ to think that _he_ is the vision. That _he_ is anything, when Thorin is here. 

“For—Goodness. Everything. That I have no idea what I’m doing, for one. That I’m—that I’ve _never_ done this sort of thing, outside mortifying drunken skirmishes in my youth. I only wish I was a more practiced lover, for your benefit.” 

Thorin shakes his head, and then the corner of his mouth quirks up, a soft, tender smile, run through with ribbons of impossible heat. It makes Bilbo’s stomach stop to witness such a thing. “You do not mind, then, if I take the lead?” 

“Oh _please,_ please take the lead. I—want it all, even if I have no names for it, or no map to guide me by. I will take direction, most enthusiastically, I can promise you that.” Bilbo cups Thorin’s cheek, and thumbs over the sharp line of his beard, tracing it reverently. “I am yours, Thorin. Just. Put me where you want me.” 

Thorin groans, and subsequently hikes Bilbo up into his arms before dumping him onto the mattress beside him. “You don’t know what you do to me,” he prays, mouth so suddenly all over Bilbo’s stomach as he pushes the Mithril up around his neck, rings clinking together in muted chimes. “How badly I want— _need—_ the whole of you. To take you like this, wearing only this,” he growls, tightening his fingers in the silver steel again in a crushing grip. His mouth is an open, desperate mess of wet against Bilbo’s navel as he adds, “I fear my desire is—that this is an abuse of power. With me a king and you—you—”

“Stop,” Bilbo murmurs, deliberately pushing Thorin lower, _aching_ with how badly he wants his mouth, his fingers, his _cock_ hollowing him out, bending him in half. _Anything._ There is no limit to what he will take, what he will do. “It’s not—I mean no _offense,_ truly _,_ but I don’t _see_ you that way. As a king, I mean. You’re not _my_ king you’re—you’re _mine._ Just another stubborn, awful, _petulant_ dwarf I’ve grown to call family in the last year but—mine. Mine alone,” he confesses, eyes shut against a cascade of static so that he does not have to witness Thorin’s reaction. “We are _different,_ and we always will be, and there is no power imbalance I want you to correct. I prefer you forget about equality, and take me as I am.” 

“But I cannot forget about equality,” Thorin mumbles, teeth against skin, chest hair scrubbing Bilbo’s cock raw as he shifts against him, rutting into the bed. “For I do not see you as some weak, soft, gentle creature who cannot sustain me,” he explains. “I see you as you are. And you _are_ my equal.” 

“Then take me as you would an equal,” Bilbo begs, spreading his legs, baring himself, astounding by how _easy_ it is to feel handsome, even _pretty,_ when he’s dressed in the Mithril Thorin gifted him, as if he were precious enough to wear such a thing. As if he were deserving of such terrible, unfathomable finery. He twists in it, loving the choke of the light fabric against his throat as Thorin bears down on him. “Take me,” he says again, this time forcing his eyes open so Thorin can _see_ the sincerity residing dark and fiery in the depths of them. “I demand you to.” 

And so, Thorin does. 


	4. It is my desire to give myself to you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place in canon, somewhere before Beorn's house maybe. Pining, swimming, bathing, scent kink, pre-slash. rating: teen and up.

It is an overly warm day, and Bilbo is, in some ways, relieved they’re camping near running water so that they might bathe. Aside from how terribly damp and thoroughly wilted and revoltingly sticky _he_ feels after a day of travel beneath the scorch of the sun, everyone else _smells_ so strongly it’s positively distracting.Bilbo _cannot_ inhale without filling his lungs to the brim with the spicy musk of _dwarf sweat,_ and it’s making him feel insane. And dizzy. And equal parts disgusted and something else which gets replaced so rapidly with shame he has yet to go through the trouble of naming it. He’d very much like to stop feeling it all. He’d like very much like to stop being reminded of the impossible things he desires from Thorin Oakenshield. He’d like very much to stop imagining burying his face into the musky, perspiration damp ditch of his neck and inhaling until his mouth floods. 

However _,_ his relief at being delivered from such things fades when the actual bathing commences. 

Bilbo is not sure _why_ he didn’t factor nudity into the scenario, but he didn’t. After they all set up camp, the whole company strips out of their armor and furs and hooded tunics, leaving them in haphazard piles along the sandy shore of the stream. And then, thirteen very naked dwarves crash into the emerald green of the river all splashing and crowing and laughing while he clutches fists in his waistcoat, and tries not to panic. 

Thankfully, the water is up to their chests at the deepest bit, where the stream bulges out and widens into a pool of sorts. Most of their bodies are submerged, and that makes it substantially easier for Bilbo to not just _sit_ there near the fire, red and staring and horrified. Instead he busies himself by slicing carrots for a stew, and pretends Gandalf is not studying him, lips curved into a thoughtful smile around his pipe. “It’s dreadfully hot out, Bilbo, why don’t you join the rest of them?” he says eventually, eyes twinkling and conspiratorial and very unsettling. 

Bilbo flinches, and nearly chops his thumb off as his hand slips. There is, of course, a multitude of reasons why he does not want to bathe in a river with the company. There is a multitude of reasons why he has, up until this point in time, done a very good job of avoiding circumstances involving naked men of any sort. However, he settles upon sharing the simplest with Gandalf, who is relentlessly meddlesome and should not be given any fodder whatsoever regarding Bilbo Baggins and his comfort zones. “Because, Gandalf, I cannot swim,” he admits. 

“Hm, well, I imagine it’s not terribly deep just by the shore, there. And if something _were_ to happen, none of your friends would allow you to drown,” Gandalf announces, sitting up exclusively to wrestle the carrot and knife from Bilbo’s hands. “Go on,” he says, gesturing with his pipe. “Hobbits are fastidious creatures, I assume this day has been quite a trial for you. I shall take over the stew. Go.” 

And it is not a question, and Bilbo _is_ tired of being sticky and hot, so, he lets himself be shooed away despite his reservations. 

The first thing he does is locate Thorin amid the rest, so that he may wade in as far away from him as possible. The last thing he needs is to get caught staring at the maddening sluice of crystalline droplets down that lovely, scarred back. He has seen very little of Thorin’s body beneath the layers of this clothing thus far, and he’d love to keep it that way. His dreams are _already_ too detailed and realistic. 

He sticks a prudent toe in, and shivers. It’s very cold. Bofur spots him and lazily swims over to the shore, wearing nothing, presumably, but his hat. “Bilbo! You can’t _ease_ in, otherwise you’ll never take the plunge,” he advises. “Best to just jump right in. S’not so bad, after that, feels right _refreshing,_ actually.” 

“Hm,” Bilbo says, flattening his mouth out to a defensive line. “I’d rather prefer to take my time, thanks.” He begins to back away toward the safety of land, but it’s too late. Bofur and Kili’s gazes meet in tacit understanding, and suddenly, Bilbo is being scooped up and tossed directly into the deepest part of the stream in _all his clothes_ as they cackle and whoop. 

He doesn’t even register the danger, at first, as much as he registers the breath-stealing _frigidity_ of it. Even if he _could_ swim he suspects he wouldn’t be able to move effectively in such cold water, so he just flails and sinks, clothes sodden and dragging at him. Kill hauls him to the surface and he sputters, choking out desperate mouthfuls of icy water, kicking uselessly, arms pinwheeling behind him. “C’mon, Bilbo, it’s not so bad,” he says with a good natured grin, and lets go. 

Just before Bilbo sinks again, he catches sight of Thorin whipping around at the sound of his name, black hair streaking through the sunlight in a glorious black curtain, blue eyes flashing before they disappear as water capsizes over Bilbo’s head and blacks the rest of the world out. 

Thorin’s majestic and hairy chest would be a lovely image to die to, Bilbo thinks, but tragically he does _not_ die. He gets strong-armed out of the water again, this time by someone much more solid that Kili or Bofur. And he has no reason to know it is Thorin, but he _does_ know. He knows it profoundly and deeply, the way his bones know from the smell of the sky when the first snow of winter is coming. Thorin is yelling, something about how Bilbo can’t swim, about how irresponsible and asinine Kili and Bofur are, how they never take anything seriously, how he is very tired of being so routinely disappointed in them, etc. Bilbo only catches every few words, because he has water in his ears, and also because he’s pressed flush to Thorin’s slick, naked body, and it’s making the blood pound so loudly in his ears it feels like he’s still plunged deep in a freezing lake. 

Bilbo is still gasping when Thorin deposits him on the shore, backlit and glittering and gorgeous as he paws all over Bilbo’s body, as if examining him for injuries. “Are you unharmed?” he says gently, thumbs coming to rest on the bare skin of Bilbo’s throat, over the flutter of his still racing pulse. It is in this moment that Bilbo realizes Thorin, unlike the rest of the company, is still wearing his underclothes. Instead of that making things _better,_ it’s much, much worse: the fabric is pale and translucent and clinging to him, riding low on his hips with the weight of being soaked, and Bilbo can _easily_ see the pathway the dark hair on his chest and stomach continues beneath them. He swallows thickly, and fidgets under the weight of Thorin’s still searching hands. 

“I—yes, I suppose I’m fine. Just. Cold. And my clothes are drenched,” he observes, cheeks burning as he drips. Thorin is studying him so carefully, eyes very blue and very worried and perhaps even a bit apologetic, as if being the leader of the company makes him responsible for the conduct of the younger, rowdier dwarves in its midst. “I don’t think they were trying to kill me, Thorin, I think they just forgot,” Bilbo offers, wringing out his waistcoat and trying to look _anywhere_ but at Thorin’s body. His gaze sweeps up to his face, instead, and that actually might be worse. Thorin _always_ looks like the hero from of a storybook illustration, but the effect is even more romantic when he’s soaking wet. It steals Bilbo’s breath, makes his eyes burn. “It’s quite alright. I’m fine,” he lies. 

“They will not forget again,” Thorin grumbles, shooting a look over his shoulder at Kili and Bofur, who are sulking nervously behind him. When he turns back to Bilbo, his expression softens substantially, and Bilbo’s stomach drops so hard he feels ill. “I shall accompany you to the shallows, if you so desire,” he offers. 

And Bilbo really didn’t need to find out what Thorin’s cock looked like in wet underclothes on the _same day_ he discovered the way the word _desire_ sounds in his voice. He has _enough_ things which keep him up at night. _I do not desire to bathe in a shallow streams with you as if we are brothers, Thorin Oakenshield, I desire to roll onto my back under you and bend my knees to my chest and beg to feel you inside me. I desire to give myself to you. I desire_ you, Bilbo things in a terrible, choking rush. 

“That’s quite alright,” he sighs, hiding his hot face in his hands and rubbing it, wishing he was not able to notice the bite of Thorin’s sweat beneath the green, cool, clay smell of the river clinging to his skin. Wishing it did not make his stomach clench tight and longing like a fist. Wishing he did not want it all over him. He inhales, sharply and resolutely. “I shall manage alone.” 


	5. pleasures remain, so does the pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags: domestic, established relationship, The Shire, drinking, kink negotiation, flirtation, discussions of Thorin's dragon sickness, discussions of rough sex, possessive Thorin, Masochist Bilbo. Rating: teen and up

It takes a bottle of wine and some brandy before Thorin will talk freely about the Arkenstone. 

“My madness was never about the stone. Not truly…not in my heart,” he slurs, waving a hand through the air before laying it across the heart in question. His thick fingers and blunt nails make something inside Bilbo twist like they always do, but instead of reaching out to touch, he clasps his own hands behind his back, and sits on them. He wants to hear what Thorin has to say, so he must not distract or discourage him from speaking. “I wanted the stone, yes, of course. But _only_ to unify the seven armies. Only to—for my people. To bring peace. I did not want it for _myself_.” 

Bilbo settles closer, presses his face into the ditch of Thorin’s neck to inhale from fever-hot skin, heart pounding in his chest. “What _did_ you want for yourself, might I ask?” though he _knows,_ deep in his blood, in his gut. That Thorin had seen _him_ as part of the treasure, somehow. Something precious, worth protecting. 

Thorin turns to him, eyes dark and out of focus and lips drawn tight in apology. “ _Ghivashel,_ ” he murmurs, touching Bilbo’s face. “I’m afraid it was you. I coveted you as if you were—”

“Oh good,” Bilbo interrupts, licking the stubble-rough skin under his tongue. “I was beginning to get jealous.” 

Thorin stirs, a rumble building somewhere deep in his chest before he pulls away and rounds on Bilbo, studying him where he’s perched amid the sofa cushions, most likely looking rather wine-rumpled. “It does—it should _bother_ you. The way I wanted you. It was not as a partner or a husband, really, it was…single-mindedly. As a _possession_.” 

“Well it didn’t _last,_ Thorin, and now you want me in the proper, not-so-all-consuming way, so. It doesn’t _bother_ me. In fact it was rather exciting, for a moment, when I thought you might put me up against stone and ravish me in front of your nephews,” Bilbo offers, getting to the heart of the issue. It’s not that his relationship with Thorin is sexually unsatisfying, by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it’s marvelous. It’s only that it has become increasingly clear the more routine it becomes, that Thorin still harbors guilt, or fear, or _something_ which prevents him from really _fucking_ Bilbo the way he sometimes, on occasion, wants to be fucked. Which is mercilessly and perhaps even violently. With one of those big, broad-fingered hands over his throat, maybe.. Bilbo _loves_ the soft, tender way Thorin worships his body and allows his _own_ body to be worshipped in return, but sometimes— _well._ Bilbo can simply take a great deal more than Thorin thinks he can. 

Thorin flattens his lips, and looks miserably at his own lap for a moment. “It is not _exciting._ I almost killed you.” 

“And I was _hard_ in my _trousers_ that day on the ramparts, you just didn’t notice because you were too busy being betrayed and thoroughly out of your mind,” Bilbo confesses, feeling his cheeks heat up as he tightens his fist around his glass of wine, which is regretfully empty. 

Thorin whips his head around so hard Bilbo feels the wind from his hair. “You were _not!”_ He snaps, sounding positively scandalized. His eyes darken, though, because he must be able to tell from the grave and mortified expression on Bilbo’s very red face that he isn't _joking._ “You were?” 

“I was! Not my proudest moment, I admit, but if we’re fair, it wasn’t yours, either. We were both acting quite inappropriately but _yes,_ if you must know, some tragic, primal part of me melts when you toss me around.” 

Thorin looks stricken. “You’re not frightened?” 

“Never! Thorin…listen,” he says softly, leaning forward and setting his glass down on the coffee table before crawling closer, laying a hand on Thorin’s forearm and squeezing. “I know you’d never hurt me. I think even then, when you’d gone quite mad and _could_ have hurt me, my soul knew _your_ soul could never do such a thing. I _trust_ you.” 

Thorin’s gaze softens substantially, and he hums low and long in the back of his throat. “I am very lucky.” 

“Perhaps. But you are also very strong, and very big, _well_ , compared to me. And I happen to love big, strong, dwarves who _could_ throw me from the ramparts if they wanted to. I happen to find them quite terribly attractive. And by them, I mean you, I don’t want any other dwarf to touch me at all, thank you very much,” he clarifies, grinning because Thorin seems to be catching on, setting his own glass down to he can grip Bilbo by the waist and push him onto the couch, palms spanning the whole of his midsection so easily. “To be frank and, quite possibly somewhat foul, I am not entirely opposed to the idea of you hurting me, a little bit. Within reason. I understand if the knowledge of my pain would make sex irreparably unappealing to you, but perhaps it would change things to know that it wouldn’t _just_ be pain. It would be pleasure, too.” 

“Hm,” Thorin mumbles, kissing Bilbo’s neck sweet and wet, beard scraping over his pulse as he makes his way down. “You are saying, you’d enjoy it if I was rough when I took you? You’d enjoy it if I didn’t hold back?” he asks, breath smiling brandy-sweet and wine-bitter as he questioningly digs his teeth into Bilbo’s throat. 

“Not all the time,” Bilbo explains, sifting his hands through Thorin’s hair, preening under the pressure , the attention. “But yes, sometimes, I would love it if you pretended you still coveted me as you once did. Like I were the Arkenstone. Like I were— _ah—_ your possession.” 

Thorin bites his shoulder hard, then smooths his tongue wet and hot over the bare, dimpled skin. It’s delicious. “You _are_ my possession,” he rumbles, and Bilbo’s smile is such a wild, sharp, raw thing he’s glad only the ceiling witnesses it. 


	6. reach out and touch faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff, domestic, smoking, The Shire, established relationship. Rating: everyone.

They’re lying on a blanket in Bilbo’s garden as the sun sets, yellow and egg-yolky in the horizon as it sinks. Thorin watches it, blinking idly when Bilbo reaches out and plucks something out of his tunic. “Look! Inch-worm,” he announces, holding a small, pale green _wriggling_ thing in Thorin’s line of vision so that he may look. 

A shiver of revulsion cascades over Thorin’s body and makes him sit up, suddenly itchy all over. He bats Bilbo’s hand away. “That was _touching_ me?” 

“Well, not you exactly, it was on your clothes. They’re harmless, you know, fauntlings even think they’re good luck.” He gently flicks the worm into the grass somewhere beside their blanket, and grabs his pipe to pack, every motion thoughtful and slow. This is perhaps as relaxed as Thorin ever sees Bilbo. He leans over and kisses his pale wrist, even though it so recently was touching a bug.

“As you may recall,” he murmurs. Then he pulls away, very carefully brushing off and examining the blanket before he lowers himself back down. “I do not care for luck.” 

“You also don’t care for insects _,”_ Bilbo observes, narrowing his eyes as he puffs his first smoke ring into the dusk. “I cannot _believe_ what a paranoid, fussy creature you turn into every time something lands on you. I must be quite in love with you, because I find it rather charming.” 

Thorin frowns. “Stone is dead,” he observes. “It’s quiet. You can sit upon it and know you won’t have a robin fly over and shit in your hair. Or an inch worm crawl up your shirt.” 

Bilbo’s laugh is a sweet, high, tittering thing, and Thorin loves him so much he can’t really frown anymore. “Are you missing the halls of Eerebor again?” he asks softly after he’s quit laughing. “I understand, you know. I don’t mean to poke fun, not really.” 

And that question, whether or not he realizes it, is a troubling one. The truth is that Thorin _does_ miss Eerebor, the way he has always missed Erebor, ever since it was lost. But he does not wish to be there, as he thought he might when he decided to renounce the crown in favor of moving to Hobbiton. This is his home, now: the green, teeming, _living_ hills of the Shire. His Hobbit, who has his heart. “I will always miss the memory of Erebor,” he starts, staring up at the sky. It is not dark enough for stars, yet, but he can see the pale sliver of the moon just above them, like a ghost. “But the memory is different than the real place…and I realize that now. I missed it so much on our journey, it became almost a holy thing to me. A religion. But of course, gods should always stay gods. If you reach out and touch them, they just become another place to act a fool and shed blood and very nearly kill everything you love,” he explains quietly. 

“Oh Thorin,” Bilbo murmurs, sympathetically, reaching out and laying soft cool fingers on the ditch of Thorin’s elbow, where the blood thrums. “Well, at least Eerebor is no longer lost. It’s a new city, to build new memories. And it is a very, very nice place to visit,” Bilbo reminds him. “And maybe I’m selfish, but I am so very glad to have you here with me, in Bag End.” 

Thorin sits up, steals Bilbo’s pipe right from his sputtering mouth, and kisses him. “As am I,” he confesses against the curves of his lips. “Inch worms and all.” 


	7. dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> established relationship, romance, hurt/comfort, nightmares. This is how the movies should have ended, tbh. rating: everyone.

Bilbo sleeps soundly most nights, tucked closely against Thorin like they are two spoons in a cutlery drawer. However, there are moments from the journey he tries to forget during his waking hours which sneak up on him in the middle of the night: the heat of terrible fire, the sulfuric burn of a dragon’s breath, the pain in his calves from slipping on endless gold. Thorin’s body laid out on ice and bleeding so heavily the air was thick with the smell of copper, and as he dreams Bilbo chokes on memories, the terror of nearly losing him as rich and sharp as if it were real. 

Often his nightmares are nothing but a series of these haphazard images tacked together in an incoherent mess, Bilbo startling out of them in a cold sweat, the sheets of his bed tangled and damp around their bodies. But sometimes, they’re terribly real. As if he is reliving that moment out in the snow again, the battle raging on somewhere beyond them and his fingers slick with blood. 

He lies in the dark on these nights and waits for his heart to slow, staring up at the ceiling, reminding himself that everything is alright, everything is the same as it was before he drifted to sleep. The dwarf periwinkle is blooming in the new warmth of spring, blooms a lovely shade of purple, several breaths darker and warmer than the blue of Thorin’s eyes. The stream just beyond his hill is fully thawed and rushing with snowmelt, and it is quite easy to catch fat fish for supper, and so they do, several times a week with the beautiful carved fishing pole and elaborate lures Thorin crafted him from birch and feathers. The squash and pumpkin seedlings in the greenhouse are nearly big enough to transplant out into the garden, and the earth will be rich and dark with all the rainfall of April. And, most importantly, Bilbo is not alone, for Thorin lies beside him, curled onto his side and snoring lightly in shadows, warm and solid and very much alive, the mattress bowing substantially under his weight since a full year of living at Bag End and eating tea cakes and sweets several times a day has broadened his body, expanded his stomach, so that when Bilbo reaches out in the sheets to touch him, he finds the most delicious softness. 

He does that now, as a breeze outside rattles the bedroom window against its frame, and startles him. His nightmares have faded but the feeling they left him with still clings to his skin, and he’s vibrating with the ghost of it. 

Thorin murmurs, and rolls over. “Hm?” he says, though Bilbo has not said anything. 

“Just bad dreams, my dearest love,” Bilbo says, rubbing a palm up his arm, moving the thick black hair against the grain. “Go back to sleep.” 

But Thorin does not. He shifts closer to Bilbo and draws him close, burying his face into the greying curls of his hair, breathing him in. “Dragons?” he asks in a sleep thick voice as he tangles their legs, one palm spread wide over the still-nervous thunder of Bilbo’s heart. 

“Yes, dragons. Or, bits of them. The tip of a tail, the leathery sound of a giant wing. Those awful eyes,” he explains in a whisper, covering Thorin’s hand with his own. “I would take one thousand dreams of dragons over a single dream of losing you, however. Those are the worst.” 

Thorin goes still, lips pausing mid kiss against the slope of Bilbo’s naked, freckled shoulder. “You dream of such things?” 

“Occasionally,” Bilbo admits, settling closer. “Of you bleeding to death on Ravenhill. Of having to come back here to Hobbiton alone after your funeral, upon never having gotten a chance to confess how I’d grown to love you. Never having gotten to beg for you to come home with me. Going old and grey with nothing but an oak tree and a map to remember you by.” Just saying it aloud tightens Bilbo’s throat, fills it with an awful thickness, the threat of tears. He inhales and it rattles, and tries his hardest to focus on the feeling of Thorin’s big, broad palm covering his heart. 

Thorin grumbles and he resumes his kisses, which are rough and hungry and desperate now, the scrape of his beard enough to make Bilbo shiver. “What a terrible dream,” he says as he rubs possessively up Bilbo’s body, clutching at him. “Come here,” he says then, as if he can possibly tug Bilbo any closer. “Let me kiss you, touch you. Let me remind you of what is real.” 

And Bilbo shifts in his arms so that he might tangle his hands in his hair and open his mouth to the plush, loving slickness of his tongue. So that he may allow Thorin to chase the remnants of nightmares away, so that he might forget a fate which never came to pass, in favor of the sweetness of truth. 

—-


End file.
